First, the tailwheel assembly comes with the plane and is not part of the hardware kit, I would never ask someone to pay extra for it, it's just not that kind of top quality assembly. It's OK, but not great.

I would have to add that problems with the tailwheel on this plane are mainly because of manufacturing differences rather than a design issue.

On most of the 28% planes tha tailwheel holds up fine, I have had no problems with them myself in many dozens of flights off grass which tends to beat up the tailwheel. I do normally replace the wheel itself with sometthing more substantion, that costs $2 at the hobby shop.

What I do see though is a greater than normal occurence of failures that seem to be because of manufacturing defects. The sprong leaf breahs, the little bearing pulls loose, stuff like that. I think they make these things about 10,000 at a time and there are some mistakes made.

So what I'm saying is if you have a tailwheel failure early in the life of your 28% Wld Hare plane call me and I'll send a new one.

One final note, that tailwheel assembly is totally inadequate for our 35% Extra and is marginal on the Giles. IF you are building a $4,000 plane you should go spend a few bucks on a heavy duty tailwheel.

TF